The company behind X-NAND flash memory claims it has doubled the speed of storage on its second-generation chips. blocks and files (opens in new tab), by enabling data writes in parallel. In this way, X-NAND can deliver SLC-level performance from QLC flash. QLC flash is cheaper and has higher capacity.
Neo Semiconductor’s X-NAND architecture, applicable to all generations of flash memory, divides each plane of the 3D matrix into 4 to 16 subplanes, uses page buffers to optimize speed, and divides each subplane into can be accessed in parallel. 2nd Generation X-NAND (opens in new tab) (PDF) takes this idea and compresses and uses one plane to write to another plane, whereas previously it used three planes to write to a fourth plane. For a full article on how this technology works, see Features here.
In a nutshell, speeding up, Gen 2 3D X-NAND chips can write at 3,200 MBps instead of 1,600 MBps in the previous generation, making the whole thing 20x faster than traditional NAND flash. There are also latency improvements, but no details have been published about this.
2nd generation technology is Best in Show Award (opens in new tab) At this year’s Flash Memory Summit, August 2-4 in Santa Clara, California.
Neo Semiconductor founder and CEO Andy Hsu said after receiving the award: product. Delivering twice the throughput of X-NAND Gen1, X-NAND Gen-2 enables customers to achieve SLC-like performance using high-capacity, low-cost QLC memory. X-NAND Gen2 incorporates non-impacting architecture and design changes while offering incredible throughput and latency improvements without increasing manufacturing costs. ”
At the time of writing, however, it wasn’t clear which storage companies were actually using X-NAND.
